Process automation and collaboration:
C-Business

“Collaboration theory and technology (CTT) has two complimentary goals:

1. Attempting to understand how people and systems SHOULD work together and
2. Developing new technologies to support people and systems working together more effectively, efficiently and innovatively”
   – SIGCTT (special interest group on collaboration theory and technology)

Today, any form of communication that occurs in an organization is more often than not through email. Even to an extent where people who normally interact by talking to each other resort to email communication. Colleagues sitting next to each other in an office also communicate through email. Email and chatting may take care of communication between individuals, but what about applications and processes that run within the organization. The result is a dramatic increase in the volume of collaborations in an organization. How is this level of collaboration organized and achieved?

Collaboration as a methodology was originally touted to encompass areas like project management, human resources and knowledge management within the organization.

To ensure that a company stays competitive and operates at optimum production levels, it is imperative that efficient collaboration between all business lines and processes exists and grows. The goal is to make knowledge workers more efficient. In addition to managing a role that is specific to a knowledge area or worker, it is necessary to manage the information that is trapped within a process.

Processes and methods that occur and reside inside an individual's head are usually lost forever, not just because they are undocumented but also because they usually are inherent part of applications that don't talk to each other.

Process automation or workflows entails managing moving data in the correct and proper order. Invoking processes within the enterprise and tying them together in a manner that supports easy flow of information and logic is what enterprise application integration (EAI) aspires for. Providing easy to use visual interfaces for binding these processes together and creating intelligent workflow models is where EAI is heading today.

Systems need to share information with one another in an orderly and efficient manner. Process automation or workflow management operates at the level in an organization, where automation tools and workflow engines exist and where the methods of information management and exchange are defined. It exists at the EAI level and encapsulates data levels, application, and user interface levels.

Enterprise application integration tools that claimed to support integration have so far achieved integration at a level that is best described as elegant and manageable. Attempts to deliver information at all levels and improve collaboration within the organization began with composite applications - specifically web-based composite applications using EAI technologies. But even they deliver what they promise only to a certain extent and fail to account for business process integration and appropriately timed information delivery.

Tools that manage business processes and manage information applications, including workflow and project management already exist as stand-alone entities, but their value cannot be realized at the levels they originally promised. Workflow management is usually not integrated with project management and vice versa. To intelligently source out the information that is trapped within an enterprise and then integrate it with existing applications we need something more than stand-alone tools. Collaboration is achieved when applications integrate with processes, projects and information in real-time across the virtual enterprise.

EAI and workflow technology solutions were designed to do just that. They define rules, procedures and interfaces, and automate them even at the management level. Automating a purchase order or a customer request frees up employees to focus on more strategic tasks, thus improving corporate efficiency in real-time. EAI was designed to bring together heterogeneous systems and share their applications. Ultimately, what both do is streamline an organization's operations for greater success.

Simultaneous delivery of the integrated information at the right time and within an EAI framework is the new collaboration model that supports the following requirements:

• A web-based composite application view to deliver information on a knowledge portal (enterprise information portal)
  
  
• Online meetings, real-time design and peer-to-peer task management activities that offer collaboration on business projects
  
  
• Present multiple tasks to collaborative knowledge workers in a common view
  
  
• Facilitate process-oriented event execution

The market for collaborative applications incorporating people and processes is potentially huge. Forrester Research says that the enterprise collaboration market will exceed $64 billion in a few years. And the solutions with greater potential are those that include the ability to integrate with other applications and other information management resources. Employees, business partners and customers dynamically collaborate, thus allowing enterprises to deliver greater value to customers by synchronizing and optimizing events and activities among a dynamic set of business partners.

The collaboration application model will be the dominant application model by 2004, according to the Gartner Group. Thus replacing the web-based stand-alone collaborative model existent today.

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